Back Issues

Jan/Feb 2010 - Issue 429

December 2009 - Issue 428

As government negotiators, corporate lobbyists, NGOs and protesters all gear up for the biggest international climate jamboree of all time, the NI asks: should we believe the hype?

Is the Cop 15 UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen this December really our last chance to save the planet? Is there any hope of getting a deal that can deliver climate justice to the world's poor, or has the UN process become a dangerous distraction from the real challenge of a rapid transition away from fossil fuels? And, if the latter is true, what should we do about it?

As activists deliberate over whether to shut negotiators in until they've made a breakthrough, or whether to shut the whole show down, cartoonist Marc Roberts beams inquisitive aliens Gort and Klaatu down to commentate on the 'Copenhagen slam-down – a night of bone-crushing, planet-trashing, wrestling mayhem'.

November 2009 - Issue 427

In the wake of 11 September 2001 and the ensuing Western ‘war on terror’, extraordinary measures have been brought into play in the four corners of the world, in the name of fighting terrorism.

These have resulted in widespread human rights violations and the curtailment of civil liberties. But have they made us any safer?

Once democracies begin to accept torture and the various perversions of the judicial process, do they have any moral authority left to confront the despots who are using counterterrorism as an excuse for cleaning up their enemies?

This edition of the New Internationalist includes a powerful essay by security guru Bruce Schneier decrying the often pointless counterterrorism theatrics against movie plot threats indulged in by our elected leaders. Find out what he thinks will actually work against terrorism.

October 2009 - Issue 426

Thirty years after the Iranian Revolution, political Islam is at a crossroads. But is the Islamic Republic really Islamic? Writer and broadcaster Ziauddin Sardar explains why he thinks it most definitely is not.

Who is funding Islamic extremism? Nafeez Ahmed gives the lowdown on support for ‘our terrorists’ – and it goes beyond the usual suspects.

Next month’s issue also offers dispatches from minority voices in the Muslim world. A gay Iraqi activist traces the changes – from discos to fatwas – in post-'liberation' Baghdad. A feisty Saudi Arabian feminist speaks her mind – and stays put in her own country. A Jewish Iranian embraces both her faith and her homeland.

Be prepared to be surprised.

September 2009 - Issue 425

Do you know what apples, almonds, broccoli, cashews, garlic, mangoes, peaches, raspberries and tea have in common? Give up? They all depend on bees to help with their sexual reproduction.

In fact, did you know that every third bite of food that you consume depends on our buzzing buddies, the bees? The busy little gals (the workers are unfertilized females) do a lot for us by pollinating plants and flowers worldwide.

Unfortunately, they're dying by the millions and no-one knows why. It’s safe to say our world won’t be the same without them.

‘No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more... people’ is a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein, though there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he actually said it. Not that it matters. The attribution is less important than the content.

This issue examines the mystery of the disappearing bees.

July/August 2009 - Issue 424

Who owns the Arctic? A few years ago most people, if they thought about this question at all, would probably have answered ‘no-one’, or possibly ‘Santa Claus’, and been content to leave it at that. But the question of who has the power to make decisions about what happens in the Arctic, and who has the right to its land, seas and resources, is increasingly starting to burn - within the Arctic nations, and beyond. Thanks to climate change, the rest of the world has never been so aware of what’s going on in the snowy north. Suddenly, we all have a stake in it. But who gets to determine its destiny? The NI takes a look beyond the images of melting ice-caps and stressed-out polar bears that are sadly becoming commonplace, and focuses on the human consequences of the slow earthquake rocking the top of the world, and the struggles over its future that are currently being played out.

June 2009 - Issue 423

It’s a year of anniversaries in China – 60 years of communist control; 30 years since capitalists joined the party; and 20 years ago next month since tanks rolled over Chinese reform movements in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

As the US falters on the world stage, China is stepping into the spotlight. Yet the lines that it will deliver are still not clear. While some say Chinese communism will save world capitalism, others think the country’s manic economic growth will kill us all. And while some welcome China’s ‘hands-off’ approach to global affairs, others point to Beijing’s economic support of some of the world’s worst regimes. This month we take a critical look at China’s global reach.

May 2009 - Issue 422

It was all about equality and respect – values few would have a problem with. So just when did multiculturalism become a dirty word? Was it about the same time as the ideas of respecting difference and embracing diversity began to be overtaken in the public mind by shrill religious fundamentalism and hectoring traditionalists?

This month’s NI sees a vibrant selection of contributors tackling these questions: British and Canadian cultural commentators Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Haroon Siddiqui; Indian journalist Shoma Chaudhury who has met the country’s leading hate-mongers; and the Mauritian novelist Lindsey Collen, who looks behind her island nation’s image as a multicultural haven.

April 2009 - Issue 421

So, what are banks for, exactly? Not to create global turmoil and drain the public purse, surely! Come to think of it, what’s money for? Or houses? Or credit? Or taxation? Or the economy? Or the environment... or... or anything?

With the global economic system in meltdown, the once booming chorus of ‘Let the Market Decide’ is pretty ragged and unconvincing these days.

And a good job too. Welcome, the Age of Possibility - the main theme of this month’s New Internationalist. In it, we look at how to create the kind of world we want to live in. We envisage a people-centred economics that serves the majority. And we seize the opportunity for some real democracy, for a change.

March 2009 - Issue 420

50-year-old Mabinty Conteh and her 18-month-old granddaughter Isatu are from Sierra Leone. Mabinty is holding up a photo of her daughter, who died giving birth to Isatu at the age of 20. Women in Sierra Leone have a 1 in 8 lifetime chance of dying in childbirth. The risk for women in Ireland, meanwhile, is 1 in 47,600.

The gulf between the Global North and the Global South is greater on this than on any other indicator – and progress towards this Millennium Development Goal is all but non-existent. Yet, as this month’s issue of the NI explains, everybody knows how these women’s lives could be saved. So why the hell is nobody doing anything about it?

Jan/Feb 2009 - Issue 419

The impending climate crisis will make the financial meltdown look like a teddy bear's picnic - and it's the world's poor and marginalized who will suffer the most. We know what's coming, and we have the means to prevent it. And yet we're just staring climate oblivion in the face. As the world continues to belch out greenhouse gases, and governments and corporations champion false solutions, a movement for climate justice is building. Its aim is to tackle perhaps the greatest challenge of our troubled times - how we can dramatically reduce global emissions while at the same time raising the quality of life for the majority of the world's people. This magazine will explore what can be done.

December 2008 - Issue 418

The current meltdown of the global financial system has knocked the crisis caused by runaway food prices out of the news. The fate of investment bankers simply gets more ink than that of those on the edge of starvation. But there is a common thread here – irresponsible profit-seeking with little regard for the future of the vulnerable. This issue dissects the ‘perfect storm’ of conditions that have devastated agriculture in the global south and is undermining the world’s ability to feed itself. The current food price boom is connected to a longer term trend that has created a trap of dependency on an industrial food system based on food imports and agro-chemical inputs. But the NI discovers that it doesn’t take Houdini to find a way out.

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ON THE NI SITE

Longing to heal
Haitians must be allowed to rebuild their own futures on their own terms, argues Scott Weinstein, a nurse from Montreal who went to the island after the earthquake to help treat the injured.

China’s neo-colonialism
Beijing is trumpeting a new free trade deal with its neighbours, but Walden Bello argues that the benefits are all likely to flow in one direction.

A rural revolution
Brazil is one of the most unequal societies in the world. But, as Alex Kawakami tells Rowenna Davis, there is a movement for change – and it’s getting bigger.

How (not) to survive the apocalypse
Anna Chen emerges from winter and wonders what happened to her backbone.